These Mortal Lives
by Pickwick12
Summary: For Loki Laufeyson, the ultimate punishment was exile to earth to live out his days as a mortal. Broken, hungry, and alone, will he find redemption in kind eyes and the realization of the preciousness of life? A bit angsty, a bit romantic, a whole lot about Loki's inward journey of pain, healing, and redemption. Imagines a future beyond Thor: The Dark World.
1. A Shadow in the Night

**Prologue**

_Had Odin meant it as a punishment? He asked himself, for it didn't seem so, not any more. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the woman next to him, the small, soft form with a rosebud mouth and pale, short hair. He reached out a hand to touch her cheek, and he smiled. The Allfather had known, had given him a blessing when he least deserved or understood it. Loki was happy._

**A Shadow in the Night**

A dark figure shivered beneath the light cast by a dingy, all-night drugstore. Loki lifted his head after a long while, revealing piercing eyes in a thin, haggard face. He stared into the darkness and wondered where he should let his weary feet drag him this night. He hardly cared. He'd expected to die by now. The bodies of the mortals had always seemed such flimsy things from the perspective of Asgard, but now that he inhabited one, he realized how tenaciously they clung to life, no matter how pathetic.

After a while, he simply sank down where he stood, his legs under him, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth. He wondered how long it would be before one of them came to run him away, one of their peacekeepers in a uniform, men who would have been nothing to him in the past but whose strength his body could no longer match.

_Cough cough cough_

The sound came closer, accompanied by the noise of rushed human feet running toward him. A figure—two, really, rounded the corner and dashed toward the drugstore, one very small person being carried by one slightly taller. The taller person turned to him and asked breathlessly, "Are they open?" His blank stare caused her to shake her head and carry the gasping smaller person, the source of the insistent coughing, toward the glass door and inside the shop.

Loki rested his head against the side of the building and waited. For the first time in days, he was actually curious. He wanted to know why the two people—the two females—had been so eager to reach that particular point in the city. He saw nothing remarkable about the shop, nothing to make it any more desirable than any other place in Los Angeles. He also wanted to see the tiny person when she wasn't coughing. He'd never been close to a human child.

The door opened after a short time, and the taller woman emerged slowly with a look of relief on her pale face. The child was not in her arms. Instead, she walked unaided on what seemed to Loki like impossibly tiny feet. She held a small, gray object in her mouth and was no longer gasping for air.

"She has asthma," said the taller woman, nodding toward the tiny one. "I forgot to get her inhaler refilled." Loki had heard of neither asthma nor inhalers, but he could reason from the obvious. The child's coughing had been silenced by the object, and the object had come from the store. He smiled. It was a pleasure so simple as to be ridiculous, but he had enjoyed nothing for a long time, and he was pleased to have his tiny mystery solved. As if she was her own tiny mystery, the little girl stared at him with gravely clever green eyes.

"Are you hungry?" asked the taller woman, her eyes taking in Loki's tattered clothing and unshaven face. Most humans, he had come to realize, thought him below notice because of his appearance, but a few had offered him money in recent days, usually with the sneer of superiority on their faces. The woman's face only showed concern.

"Yes," he answered simply, unable to think of anything he could lose by his honesty.

"Come with us." Loki looked up in genuine surprise at the woman's words. "Pip and I are going to McDonald's to celebrate, right, Pip?" The child, who was obviously the Pip being mentioned, took the gray cylinder out of her mouth and looked up at the taller woman as a large smile slowly transformed her face into pure impishness. She did not speak.

Loki stood up, feeling the wind knife him through the holes in his thin black shirt. He followed the women. He didn't know why, except that death was long in coming, and his stomach growled at him angrily. So much easier to imagine starving oneself than to actually do it. Human bodies were insistent in their cravings.

Two blocks later, the taller woman led them through another of the city's innumerable dirty glass doors and into McDonald's. Loki had never been inside such a place, but he had seen the name all over the city and smelled what seemed to be the scent of food that issued from it wherever it occurred.

Bright lights and noise overwhelmed Loki's senses. People yelling, eating, walking all around him. He felt a light touch on his right hand and looked down to find Pip next to him. "It's all right," she said. "Just tell mom what you want, and she'll get it. I don't like to go up there, either." She nodded toward a morass of people at the front of the room who appeared to be waiting in lines in front of a large, unpleasant kitchen.

Mother. That made sense. The child and the woman shared pale skin and button noses. "I would like—meat," he said, feeling himself at a loss.

"Meat?" said the mother encouragingly, "beef or chicken?"

"I want a Happy Meal!" put in little Pip suddenly, earning a look from her mother.

"Don't interrupt, Philippa," she said.

"It's all right," said Loki. "I'll have the same." The burst of laughter that flew out of the older woman's mouth shocked him.

"I'm sorry," she said after a while. "You're obviously not from around here. I should have gotten that from the accent. I'll order you a couple of hamburgers."

Loki waited beside the little girl, feeling rather foolish, but grateful that this little person didn't seem to be as insistent upon making conversation as some of the mortals he'd had the misfortune to meet.

A short time passed, and the mother returned holding a paper bag that smelled of food. Loki felt as if his stomach would jump from his body at any moment, but somehow he managed to restrain himself until he was seated next to the women and child in an uncomfortable chair that was somehow attached to a hideously ugly table. He wondered again, as he constantly wondered, how mortals managed to bear living with such a vast plethora of ugly things around them. Asgard was beautiful, both in essence and in the way its resources had been harvested for use. Nothing existed for function's sake alone; all was beautiful. Nothing jarred the eyes and darkened the mind with its unpleasant form. He missed the peace that unbroken beauty engendered.

Loki eagerly accepted the greasy parcels the mother handed him. He would have eaten the paper, but just in time, he saw Pip unwrap her food and discard the white encasement, so he did the same, then brought the doughy, meaty mass to his lips. It was both loathsome and toothsome, a disaster and the most delightful meal he'd ever tasted, made so by his gnawing hunger as it was finally put to rest. He ate two of the nasty things and found that he felt better than he had in at least a week.

"That was fast," the mother observed. "Here, have another one." She handed him a third, undoubtedly purchased for herself, he realized, but he took it, despising his own neediness and dispatching the thing as rapidly as he had its predecessors.

When he had finished, he felt Pip's round jade eyes on him again. He smiled uncomfortably. It seemed unaccountable that such a miniscule human person could unsettle him, but then, the past weeks had been filled with unbelievable things. He wondered if all mortal children had eyes like hers.

"What's your name?" asked the mother, smiling warmly. "I'm Lena, and this is Philippa, but we call her Pip."

"Oh," said Loki. There was no name-shortening on Asgaard, at least not in the palace of Odin.

"My name…is Loki," he finally answered. What did it matter if they knew?

"Loki." Pip's voice was soft and high. He liked the way his name sounded on her lips, like a song. Nothing like the frost that covered his soul.

"Thank you for eating with us, Mr. Loki," said Lena, smiling into his eyes. "We should be going home now. It's way past Miss Pip's bedtime."

Mothers. He could understand those. Tender even when they were angry, always worried for their children, forever putting themselves behind their offspring. Mothers were the same in any realm.

Loki followed mother and daughter outside and prepared to leave them at the corner of the street, but Lena turned back to him one last time. "If—she hesitated—if you need a place to sleep, I know someone who has one. I don't want to assume—"

"Inside?" The question was wistful on his lips. He had not slept inside for a fortnight.

"Of course," said the woman, with compassion in her eyes. He deplored the thought of himself as an object of pity almost beyond bearing, but he followed the woman again. He had begun to learn that basic need could almost always supersede feeling when one was encased in mortal flesh.

**Stray Cats**

Lena Warren kept her hand on the small can of mace in her purse. The tall, thin stranger seemed more desperate than dangerous, but she didn't take chances. The city could be an ugly place. Her daughter's tiny hand clutched her purse strap, and together they led the man toward the nearest Metro station. Lena hoped Belinda wouldn't be too upset that she was bringing another one, another stray.

She'd never been able to resist stray kittens as a little girl, and she hadn't changed all that much as a grown woman. Men, women, kids, she couldn't turn them away, not when they needed help. People called her naïve sometimes, but it wasn't that. She knew some of the people she helped were taking advantage, but that wasn't what mattered. She had decided years before that helping someone who didn't deserve it was a much better thing than failing to help someone who did.

She wasn't stupid enough to bring them home, not any more, anyway. She'd made that mistake when she was much younger and found herself locked in the bathroom dialing the police. Nowadays, she took them to Belinda, her expansive friend who owned a house that was always filled with a conglomeration of recovering addicts, juvenile offenders, people out of work, and anyone else who just needed a place for a while.

The stranger—Loki—would at least have a mattress to sleep on there. Who in the world asked if a place to sleep was inside? Lena didn't know where he was from, but she hated to see anyone so down and out.

The metro was half empty because of the late hour, and Lena sat with her daughter in her lap. Loki took his place beside her, staring at the ground or his worn shoes or perhaps nothing. She didn't pry. People she helped almost never became further parts of her life. She was a temporary stop—a blessing, she hoped—but nothing permanent. She didn't need their stories to help them, and most were reluctant to speak.

"Next stop," Lena said softly, and the man's intense blue eyes turned to her suddenly. She felt as if he could see into her, the way it was always described in books. She hadn't thought the sensation was a real one until that moment, and she couldn't tell if he approved of what he saw or if he was passing judgment. She only knew that she felt transparent when he looked at her.

She was relieved when the train pulled into the station nearest Belinda's house. She needed an excuse to get away from those haunting eyes.

**The Man in Black**

Pip liked the man who wore all black. She liked his wavy black hair and his long fingers and the way he walked. He reminded her of the heroes in her book, the fairy tale one Mummy had given her for Christmas, with the story in it about the lost prince. Mr. Loki was a lost prince. She was absolutely sure of that.

She had stared at him for the whole train ride, trying to figure out where he had come from and why he was stuck riding the subway when a prince should surely have a flying horse or a chariot. Mummy had always said staring at strangers was impolite, but Pip couldn't help it, and he didn't seem to mind. She wanted to ask him where he came from and if he was married to a princess and if he was going to be king someday, but she was too shy. Anyway, Mummy would have thought she was crazy. After all, she wasn't a baby who didn't know the difference between real and make-believe. But Mr. Loki was a prince. She knew it.

That's why she didn't think to be afraid of him. She was sometimes scared of the people Mummy helped, the ones who were drunk or having problems with their brains. Those times, she would stick close to her mother. But she wasn't scared of Loki, because he was a lost prince, and there wasn't anything to be scared about. He just needed to find whatever he was missing.


	2. The Faces

**The Faces**

Loki followed the compact form of the mother and the minuscule one of the child as they led him three blocks from the train station and to the front of a white house with peeling siding and a yard overgrown with weeds. He saw warm yellow light in the windows, and he felt his heart lurch, eager at the prospect of warmth and shelter.

"My friend Belinda will put you up, ok?" said Lena, nodding toward the rundown structure. Loki nodded once and waited as she knocked lightly at the door. Pip stood on her tiptoes as if she would burst before it finally opened.

"Hello?" A large, smiling woman emerged onto the front step, dressed in a bright pink robe. "Oh, it's you, Honey." She enveloped Lena in a tight hug and then swung Pip up onto her hip.

"This is Mr. Loki," said Lena, motioning him forward. He stepped into the faint light that emanated from inside the house and felt the genial woman's eyes on him.

"You need a place, Baby?" she asked, reaching out a thick hand. Loki clasped it. He had seen the mortals shake hands, and he knew that he was expected to do the same. He didn't want to jeopardize his potential for a bed. What he hadn't counted on was the pleasantness of the warmth that coursed through him from the woman's touch. "Come with me," she said softly. "I have just the thing."

The inside of the house wasn't any more prepossessing than the outside, but to Loki it was as welcome as the throne room of Asgard. Everywhere he walked, he had to be careful not to step on people or their possessions, some who looked as bad as he did, others who looked even worse. Most of them were sleeping on mattresses, huddled up but not uncomfortable in the home's warmth. Without speaking, Belinda led him to a small back room that was dark and quiet. A young boy lay near the door, but the room was empty.

"Your first night, you get prime booking," said Belinda, quietly opening a closet and pulling out a mattress similar to the others Loki had seen. It was worn, but it smelled cleaner than anything he had encountered for days. Belinda placed it near the door and handed him a feather pillow. "Here you go, Baby. Just so you know, if you have any weird ideas, I've got a gun, and most of the people in here have knives."

"He won't do anything," Pip suddenly piped up loudly from her place on Belinda's hip. "He's nice." Loki looked at her in sudden surprise.

"Shh, people are sleeping!" Lena took her daughter from the other woman. "We have to be getting home now. Good night, Mr. Loki. Good luck." As the women passed him, Pip made her mother stop, and she reached up and pulled his face close to hers. She stared at him for long moment with her jade green eyes, and then she smiled.

Once he was alone the dark room, Loki lay down on the mattress. For a while, his only thoughts were immediate ones—of the blissful comfort of his body lying against something soft instead of the hard ground and the warmth of knowing that he was _allowed _to be here, invited, even, instead of an interloper on a world that didn't want him. His eyes closed quickly, and just as his thoughts were turning to bigger, darker realities, he fell asleep. His body was so weary that he slept until morning, and his dreams did not intrude on his conscious mind.

The next morning, the exile awoke early, disoriented by his surroundings. He opened his eyes, lamenting for the millionth time the loss of the extra-keen senses he'd once possessed. He realized after a while that he was inside a human house, and finally the recollection of the previous night reminded him of his circumstances. He woke up hungry, but not nearly as starved as he'd expected. The previous night's food still fortified his weak frame, and he thought of the woman and her child, thankful that they, unlike most of their fellow humans, had deigned to treat him as if he existed.

Loki sat up and stretched his limbs, feeling better than he had for many days. He swung his long legs over the side of the mattress and rose, and the scent of some kind of food drifted into his nostrils. His body had fully appropriated the sustenance of the previous night, and he cursed the weakness that meant he required food again so quickly.

He opened the door of the room and walked out into the house, noticing that he wasn't the only early riser. Very few of the occupants still slept, and several were engaged in conversation. He didn't speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. Instead, he followed his nose through the ancient, run-down house and found his way to the kitchen, where the smell of food originated.

"Good morning, Baby," said Belinda, who was now clad in a bright green dress. "Come on in." Loki stepped into the small, hot room, which contained Midgardian cooking devices. He didn't know all their names, but he could see that the woman was cooking pieces of meat that looked like sausages and some kind of flat bread that sizzled.

"Everybody likes sausage and pancakes," she said, suddenly handing him a plate piled high with pieces of the bread. "Take that out to the table in the dining room and come back for more." She pointed through the kitchen and into a room with a large table, crowded with chairs around it that were occupied by people of all ages.

Unsure of himself, Loki gingerly carried the plate to the table, but before he faced the question of where to set it down, eager hands grabbed it and began passing it around. He returned to Belinda, desperately hoping she might feed him something, but afraid he wasn't allowed to ask. The last thing he wanted was to lose the most favorable situation he'd experienced since his exile.

"What's wrong, Honey?" the woman asked as she presented him with a bowl piled high with sausage.

He cleared his throat. Silly for a prince of Jotunheim to be too nervous to speak to a woman of Midgard. He squared his shoulders. "I—I'm hungry."

Belinda looked at him for a moment, and her face conveyed surprise. "Oh, Baby, don't you know how to fight for it? I assumed you knew you should just grab something before they take it all. There's enough to go around, but you have to be quick." She sailed over to attend to a utensil of some sort, and he took the sausages to the table, but this time, he ate three of them in the doorway of the kitchen. In the past, he could have conjured an illusion and taken whatever he wanted, but now he could not afford to be greedy, lest the large woman see him and force him back to the street.

The diners at the table were as quick to seize the sausages as they had been the pancakes, and Loki watched with amazement at how quickly they had passed them around and emptied the bowl completely of its contents. A very young woman with shaky hands tried to cut her meat and failed, but the elderly, nearly toothless man next to her did it for her instead. The exiled prince did not understand the reason for the man's kindness or for the red-eyed, ravaged look of the girl. As he glanced around the table, there were many things about the faces of the occupants that he did not understand.

The faces, he now knew, were his punishment. The experience of a human existence, even for a short time, had taught him how brief and harsh and fraught with meaning earthly lives were. In their faces, he saw the faces of the men and women and children he had killed, if not with his own hands, then by his choices. They each meant _so much_, their every moment as precious as a jewel because they had been given so few.

Loki stumbled outside before the tears that filled his eyes spilled over. He stood on the dirty street, in front of the crumbling house, and he wept. He wept as he had not done since the day he'd fallen from Asgard, but this time he did not weep for himself. He cried for the moments—the moments that would have turned into days and then years—moments to live and to love and bear children, moments to die deaths of peace and dignity. He wept for every moment he had stolen from the Midgardians whose lives he had taken.


End file.
